Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Girls in Liberia

On Sunday afternoon we went around the city with a Tour guide. We visited the Ducor hotel, luxurious building that was destroyed during the war. Nothing but a great view is left from this hotel, which was for sure glorious on its time.

On the way back we walked around Monrovia. It was clearly a poor neighborhood. Trash was lying in the ground, houses were small and unpainted and in every single street we saw the same image: children playing in the street with no adult supervision. 

At one point we passed a group of girls that looked at me surprised and reluctant. My natural instinct was just to wave at them, and after I did it they gave me a huge smile and started following me down the street. These girls followed me around three blocks just to find out my name and after I told them my name, one by one they started telling me theirs. Then, one of the other interns took a picture of us* (see below) and the girls left so happy, laughing and clapping as if something extraordinary just happened to them.

In that moment I felt humble and realized that those girls taught me a valuable lesson: even in the middle of the most shocking misery, smiling is possible.  I could not stop thinking about these girls, especially after the next day when I met a man who works at the Ministry of gender. He told me about the gender gap in Liberia, about the inequality of opportunities between girls and boys and the lack of empowerment in women.

The Ministry of gender in Liberia is working, among other things, on closing the gender gap in education enrollment. The main two causes for lower enrollment in girls are:

1.       Access: in rural areas schools are far away from girl’s houses and parents don’t want them to walk far distances by themselves, because they are afraid of something bad happening to them.

2.       Social norms: most families don’t invest the same amount of resources (time, money, attention) in their sons and daughters.  Fathers mostly, tend to think that because girls will marry and go away without carrying their family name it is not worthy to invest in their education.

Sadly, this person was also telling me that even when they get girls to enroll in school there are other issues that prevent them to stay in school or succeed. As an example, there are many cases of teachers asking girls for sexual favors as a condition for good grades.

This sort of problems translates into women’s lives later, not only into the lack of economic opportunities but also into the role of women within the household. In Liberia most women don’t have a say in the family budget, even if they contribute with part or most of the money. 
As anecdotic evidence; my new friend shared a story with me about a man in a rural community that was complaining about his wife being lazy and not contributing to the family budget. This man was asked to make a list of all the activities he does in a day and to priced them. Afterwards he was asked to do the same for his wife’s activities. At the end of the day the value in dollars of the woman’s activities was four times higher than those of the man.

As I said I could not stop thinking about these girls and about the fact that they might face these challenges sooner or later.  They might not be aware of them or they might even think that life is just the way it is. Hopefully the Liberian government’s strategy to support the economic and social empowerment of women and girls will be able to change that.  Until that,  I hope my girls keep smiling.

                                                 * Thanks to Nick Bayard for the picture.

No comments:

Post a Comment